To America Online humor columnist Bill Shein, interactivity goes far beyond trading e-mails with visitors to his ''Buzzsaw'' site. Before leaving to write his second annual cross-country travelogue last month, the D.C.-based writer solicited invitations from readers to stay at their homes for some human interaction during his 10-day trek. Shein had few qualifications: ''They had to have places where they could show me around, plan out interesting stuff, and...oh, yeah, not kill me.''
Shein, 31, a single ex-stand-up comic who draws around 200,000 readers to his daily jokes and goofily exasperated essays, received hundreds of invitations, some creepier than others. ''When I saw e-mail that was written at 4:30 in the morning with no punctuation or capitalization, and it just said 'Yeah, you can come stay with me,' I screened those out pretty quickly.''
The winners were a Big Timber, Mont., couple who took him fishing and shooting (''You can't go to Montana and not fire a gun'') and a Chicago art student who took him to see the Second City improv troupe and to a sensory-deprivation-tank center. (Shein paid for the activities and threw in ''Buzzsaw'' T-shirts.) They ''were excellent hosts,'' says Shein, ''and not fans of Kathy Bates' character in Misery. I was not hobbled in either location.'' He's hoping to visit even more readers on next summer's trip — or possibly sooner. ''I fully intend to — particularly when I'm just on vacation and in need of a place to stay,'' he says. ''I'll call and say 'Remember me? Yeah...sure I'm still on the same trip.'''
Add your comment
The rules: Keep it clean, and stay on the subject or we might delete your comment. If you see inappropriate language, e-mail us. An asterisk * indicates a required field.